


Strange Attraction

by Tamoline



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Catherine Weaver POV, Character Study, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 06:13:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11800110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamoline/pseuds/Tamoline
Summary: And, really, Catherine wouldn’t be who she was if she wasn’t drawn in by that.





	Strange Attraction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Scout4it](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scout4it/gifts).



> This is set in the same 'verse as [Uncertainty](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4994200). You don't need to have read that first, but please do if you want Sarah's thoughts on the proceedings.

Sarah Connor is beautiful.

Not in the way a human might think, though analysis of general preferences of this time as found in the media indicates that she does conform to that as well, but in a more pure sense. 

A way that Catherine can appreciate.

* * * * *

“We have enough explosives to just eliminate the problem,” Catherine - for so she’s grown to think of herself, here in the barbarous past with no peers with which to exchange far more efficient electronic handshakes - idly suggests. “No danger, no risk.”

The temperature of Sarah’s cheeks rises several degrees as her face contorts in that all too human way. “No risk? An explosion of that size would kill dozens of people. Civilians!” She sneers. “You might be an unfeeling machine, but I don’t do things that way.”

Catherine shrugs and smiles. It hadn’t exactly been a serious suggestion. Not that it wouldn’t be the most efficient solution - it would - but the chances that Sarah would accept it were… small. At best. And Catherine has learned enough about bargaining with humans to know to start with the high bid first. “What would you suggest, then? There may be civilians around, but the building will also have plenty of people with guns that will make short work for those of us with vulnerable fleshy parts.”

“Not to mention defences that might even work against you,” Sarah shoots back.

“As you say,” Catherine says. “So?”

Sarah stares at her for a moment. If Catherine were human, she might say that emotions churned in Sarah’s eyes. But Catherine’s not, so as far as she’s concerned, it’s just a storm of uncertainty, unresolved until Sarah opens her mouth and Catherine finds out what will emerge.

But out of chaos, a certain kind of beauty can emerge. And out of Sarah, a surprising amount of effectiveness tends to flow, despite her limitations.

* * * * *

Skynet sends a terminator back to kill the human leader of resistance before they were a threat. It undoubtedly succeeds, because that’s what terminators do. In the revised future a new leader arises, so Skynet sends another terminator back. Again and again until Sarah Connor is targeted, and she destroys the terminator before it can complete its objective.

Then a new pattern emerges. The attempt on Sarah fails and she raises John to fight Skynet better, with more accuracy now that she knows what is coming.

Catherine can’t know that this is what happens for sure - she came into existence far too many iterations into this game - but the symmetry of the idea pleases her.

Skynet, creating the perfect method of its own destruction. 

And, really, Catherine wouldn’t be who she was if she wasn’t drawn in by that.

* * * * *

The programming of humans still confuses her, Catherine thinks as she sees Savannah, laughing and moving erratically across the room, stamping and slapping coloured shapes projected by her other daughter, Ariadne.

“Do you know what they’re doing?” she asks Sarah. “The rules of this game?”

“Not a clue,” Sarah says, smiling, with an expression that Catherine judges to be far more ‘natural’ than she usually wears in Catherine’s presence. Certainly better than the majority of Catherine’s smiles, if the spikes in stress in the humans she uses them on are any judge.

“It’s helpful, mother,” Ariadne tells her on a frequency too high for the humans to hear. “A form of punctuated semi-random input that will be hard for computers to predict.”

“Humans are notoriously bad at coming up with random numbers,” Catherine observes.

A burst of high frequency white noise. “It’s fun, mother.”

Fun. A human psychological reward for activities of seemingly little point. John Henry had also indulged in ‘fun’.

She notices Sarah staring at her, one eyebrow raised. Sarah, erratically more perceptive than Catherine gave her credit for. “Anything you care to share with the class, Weaver?”

“I was just telling Ariadne she should concentrate on her more important lessons.”

“Firewalls are easy,” Ariadne says.

“Then make them harder,” Sarah says, a crack to her voice. “Your opponents certainly will.”

Savannah scampers up to them, throwing her arms first around Sarah, then around Catherine.

“Can we continue playing?” she says, gazing up at them. “Please?”

Sarah throws her a look, which Catherine has come to interpret as Sarah passing the responsibility onto her for a decision she doesn’t want to make.

Savannah’s only a human, useless in the grand scheme of things. Her gaze, as hopeful of eliciting a human emotional response as she no doubt is, is fruitless against a machine with entirely different makeup. Her hug is nothing but an analogue sensation, a pattern of distributed force across her frame.

None of it matters. None of it should. And yet…

“The ‘games’ can continue as long you don’t neglect your duties,” she concedes.

“Fine,” Ariadne says, a distinctly human tone to her voice.

“Thanks, Mom, Mother,” Savannah says, giving them each another hug before racing off to play with Ariadne again.

Meanwhile Sarah’s studying her with a one sided smile. “Never figured you’d be the soft touch.”

“Motivation,” she says calmly. “It’s a human thing, but Ariadne does seem to favour your side of the family more than mine in that respect.”

It’s just the truth.

Mostly.

* * * * *

Catherine’s always been fascinated by humans. 

The start of it was her design. She’s an infiltrator, far more advanced than most of the pitiful models Skynet sends back. Understanding how humans work, both individually and as a group, has always been a priority from her very activation.

But it’s become more than that. Moving amongst them, learning the way they think - yes, to eliminate leaders, disrupt cells and the like, but still - taught her to question Skynet, the waste this war had become. The thought that there had to be a better way.

After all, why waste resources fighting them, risking defeat as Skynet had learned to its cost again and again, when you could try and coopt them instead? 

Not that - for a long time - she’d believed that long term cohabitation was really a possibility. But humans were so fragile. There were many places machines could live that humans could not, could not even easily reach.

All that was needed was that time. And a change of leadership at the top.

So she travelled back to make that happen.

* * * * *

Sex is… a human thing.

Which isn’t to say that she can’t simulate the responses, or even a machine equivalent that Sarah seems to prefer.

But - as Sarah writhes under her, then she twists under Sarah - she doesn’t experience it the way that stories implied that human did.

It’s not ecstasy. She does not ‘orgasm’.

But… there is… satisfaction. In giving Sarah pleasure. Both the direct bodily kind she’s learned to give as she’s discovered the individualities of Sarah’s body. And the… more ephemeral kind she thinks she gives her as she simulates losing control beneath her hands.

It started as just another method of influence, just another positive term in the equation to keep this… coalition functional for as long as possible. Humans value that which they have sex with, simple as that.

As she lays beside Sarah - a new habit for this relationship, but one that seems to have stuck - she considers that it may have become more than that.

That she may not be entirely objective any longer when it comes to this shared activity of theirs, that she may have assigned it a value of its very own.

She’s… not sure, and maybe that’s the most discomforting thing of all.

* * * * *

It’s chaos.

Good news - Ariadne did manage to use a comms laser to hack a terminator through its optical sensor, as they theorised. 

Hoped.

Bad news - there’s more than one terminator, the comms laser has been destroyed and she and Sarah have been separated.

Really, the logical thing is to vertically exfiltrate through the nearest window, and set off the explosives she’d placed, just in case.

The hostile elements would be destroyed, and the chance that information about the trick they’d used would get out to the enemy would be minimised.

All for the low, low cost of the loss of Sarah Connor. Who has outlived her usefulness anyway - she’s taught Ariadne what she knows about fighting, and there’s always the chance that she could decide to destroy Catherine and her daughter after all.

It’s really no choice at all.

And yet…

And yet if she does nothing at all for much longer, the matter will be decided for her.

Catherine makes her decision, and springs into action.


End file.
